It has been recognized that there are substantial advantages to being able to remotely monitor biometric data at dispersed space locations from a centralized location and to accumulate the required data at such location. One such system has been disclosed in and claimed in Peddicord et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,402,691B1 assigned to the assignee hereof and incorporated herein by reference. In Peddicord et al., remote monitoring units couple patient/resident information via wired or wireless networks to a centralized monitoring location. Such information can be used at the centralized location to evaluate the medical condition of a particular patient/resident. Decisions can be made as to the necessary additional followup such as adjusting the individual's medication, treatments or diet, as well as additional physical followup.
A variety of different entities, which are not necessarily in the vicinity of the monitoring station, would benefit from ready access to all such collected information. For example, physicians, nurses, therapists, home health professionals and the like all of whom may be located at offices displaced from the central monitoring station, or traveling in their vehicles between the residences of various patients, may have substantial needs to view such information.
Additionally, there are outstanding needs to provide various levels of accessibility to the relevant population. For example, the patient/resident as well as relatives might benefit from access to at least portions of the information. Clinicians, such as physicians, dentists, nurses, physical therapists, home health workers, case managers and the like all might benefit from ready access to different levels of such information. Privacy is an ongoing concern and there is also a need to be able to exclude inappropriate individuals from access.
Thus, there continues to be an ongoing need for systems and methods which would enable health care professionals to access their patients' information on demand. Preferably role based access could be provided to respective individuals using the role of the respective individual as a vehicle to determine which information to make available relative to the respective patient/resident.
There is also an ongoing need to provide access to authorized individuals to the patient/resident information from a variety of locations displaced not only from the patient/resident but also from the central monitoring site where the information might have been collected. Preferably such access could be provided via one or more computer networks and through a variety of data processing units such as handheld units, laptops, desktop computers and the like, all without limitation in a wired or wireless environment depending on the user's circumstances.